How do some of the world's biggest geopolitical actors construct the Arctic in relation to each other?

气候变化导致的北极冰层退化创造了新的空间，可能会改变自然资源的可用性，并重新定义亚洲，欧洲和北美之间的全球连通性。对北极的兴趣主要来自北极理事会的8个成员国：加拿大、丹麦、芬兰、冰岛、挪威、瑞典、俄罗斯和美国，但也有来自非北极国家，即中国（Huang，拉瑟尔和阿列克谢耶娃，2015年）和欧盟（Wegge，2012年）。鉴于北极是世界上最强大的国家感兴趣的空间，它们在该地区的互动方式可能会影响未来几十年的全球政治，全球经济和国际法规则。鉴于各国如何对该地区采取行动取决于它们如何理解该地区，该项目提出了一个研究问题：“对北极感兴趣的国家如何理解该地区？“.空间的建造发生在社会的不同阶层和不同地点。重要的证据可以在国家政策中找到（Wegge 2012，2014，Charron et al 2012，Altunkaya 2019），但官方沟通和战略很少描绘全貌。该项目将从概念的角度找到并剖析Vantage位置，此时主要地缘政治行为体正在发现该地区的重要性，并试图根据自己的观点塑造规则和治理结构。这是一个及时的项目，尤其是在俄罗斯和西方国家因乌克兰危机可能发生军事对抗的背景下。该项目将使人们更深入地了解对北极感兴趣的各个国家如何根据自己的规范和抱负构建一个真实的不断变化的地理空间。对于学术文献，这项研究可以为更好地理解北极地缘政治提供坚实的进展，特别是在海洋的情况下，以及这对IR的重要性。由于IR主要是陆基的，这个项目可以扩展IR的范围，考虑我们世界的物理尺寸，这是IR的一个显著限制（佩雷拉2017）。

The deterioration of Arctic ice due to climate change creates new space that potentially changes the availability of natural resources and redefines global connectivity between Asia, Europe, and North America. Interest in the Arctic is mainly from the 8 members of the Arctic council: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the US, but also from non-Arctic based countries, namely China (Huang, Lasserre and Alexeeva 2015) and the EU (Wegge, 2012). Given that the Arctic is a space of interest to the world's most powerful states, how they interact in the region will likely shape the rules of global politics, the global economy and international law for the coming decades. Given that how countries act towards the region is based on how they make sense of it, this project asks the research question: "How do countries interested in the Arctic make sense of the region?".The construction of space takes place at different levels of society and in different sites. Important pieces of evidence can be found in national policies (Wegge 2012, 2014, Charron et al 2012, Altunkaya 2019), but official communications and strategies seldomly portray the whole picture. This project will find and dissect the vantage points from an ideational standpoint, at a time where the major geopolitical actors are discovering the region's significance and are attempting to shape rules and governance structures in accordance with their own view. This is a timely project, not least against the background of a potential military confrontation between Russia and Western states over the Ukraine-crisis. This project will provide a deeper understanding of how the various countries interested in the Arctic construct a real and changing geographic space in relation to their own norms and ambitions. To academic literature, this research can provide solid progression toward better understanding of Arctic geopolitics, particularly on the case of the ocean and how this is significant to IR. Due to IR primarily being land based, this project could extend the scope of IR to be consider the physical dimensions of our world, a notable limit to IR (Pereira 2017).